9UNP0144SD_J Morgan Puett_WordPress

- Tell me if I get a little too loud, 'cause I get real animated sometimes. I just wanted to turn on a little bit of background music, but by all means, if it gets too loud, y'all please let me know. How's that? Can you hear that and still hear me? It's a little ambiance. And it's not very much time, so I'm just going to flash. This is on automatic. I'm going to just try to talk to you about how it is that I work. Then eventually, I'll go through a little introductory period and move to a few projects towards the end. 

Hopefully, this sort of music will slow me down at a certain point and we can fit some questions in. Because questions will engage more, because there's a lot of material I'm going to show you. And just flash it on automatic. So give me just a second here. Okay, well, as you understand about me by now, is that I had a little period as a fashion designer in New York City. And that happened quite by accident. I was completely never intending ever to be a fashion designer. I grew up the daughter of a painter, a writer, who is also a third generation bee keeper in turbulent '60s down in south Georgia during the civil rights movement. And that affected my work and my life politically, socially through present and into the future. And this little period, well not little, actually it was about 20 years of fashion design history was brought on quite accidentally by some installation work I was doing as a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute. 

And to make a long story short, I sort of went to study about Depression Era clothing for this particular conceptual project that I was producing that also was about dwelling. And if I don't get back to dwelling, I want someone to ask me about it, because it's very important to my work. So clothing, dwelling, thinking, is very important. And the thing that happened to me was that I went to the Metropolitan Institute of Costume, and searching for these Depression Era clothing, that I couldn't find any specimens of in any museum in the country. And the curator told me that they did not exist. I was flabbergasted. I just thought how can this be? This is a whole period of our history that's just gone. It made me realize, and brought me into the institutional critique forum, that our institutions were collecting, you know, aristocratic, Euro-centric, you know, very specialized collections through a particular class through history. And that was very epiphanaic for me, and disturbing. 

I suddenly realized there's this huge vast field of work out there to be done. And now already, you know, I was an installation artist, just totally driven by the material, complex, field of installation practice. But really frustrated by its sort of systems of exclusion, i.e. the art world. And I knew that I wasn't going to function in that world in a regular way. So what I proceeded to do was to try to run through this project that I was working on about Depression Era clothing. And what happened was, as people responded more to the clothing than they did the installation itself. The installation was one thing, but the clothing, people wanted to buy. And I got commissioned to do a body of clothing for architects, writers, painters. So I just thought, this is something. 

And then at a very early stage in my development, I realized fashion was an intersection for me. It was an intersection of everything that I believed in and that I wanted to do. And suddenly could thrust me as a studio artist, installation artist, into a practice that was more social and public. Now, why do you think that might be crazy? I believe that fashion is a system that is used, negotiated, or imposed, by every person on this planet. Every person. And I challenge you to just dispute that. There's no other system of communication. No other universal system that actually touches every person on this planet. And I found it a rich field of negotiations. 

And a series of things evolved from that moment on for me as a young artist, and they are still evolving today, hopefully. So what you're looking at right now is sort of that fashion history of me sort of experimenting in a public sphere. And I said the other day to the grad students, you know, the thing about my practice is I immediately had to make my studio a public place. I opened up a series of retail stores in Manhattan. And I knew nothing about the fashion industry. And it was really ironic, because people sort of walk over that retail threshold and say, "Fix me." "Do me." "Seduce me." But the fact is, you know, I came out of art, art history, contemporary art. I was just sort of like trying to get them to read into the conceptual projects I was doing through fashion. 

So you're just getting flashed, you know, with a bunch of fashion images. But it was a very early experimental period for me. Uh oh. 
(laughter)
 To go into the cosmos where I am now. 
(laughter)
 Which is a current project that I'm working on now with Spurse, the collective. So that's going to happen. Will you just... Okay, thank you, because I'm not watching the images. 

So y'all tell me if that happens again. Like for instance, this erotica series, you know, people really got upset by this the other day when I showed this in the PC world of Madison, radical institute. But this is actually, you know, early response, you know, to the way fashion functions. And there was a whole embodied installation, discourse, visitation, salon. My stores are like salons, so I would invite my artist friends, my theory friends, my curator friends. And it would become sort of a little salon forum of discoursing around projects. I didn't do a traditional fashion show. I would do more installation, presentation, performances around these projects. What you're looking at right now is when a moment when my fashion business closed, my wholesale business closed because I was such a bad businessperson. I hired all the wrong people. 

And behind the doors, you know, things were happening and my business grew really fast. I became an international little starlet on the fashion scene. With that kind of fast growth in capitalism, this series of problems occur. And you just can't keep up with it. So in 1997 I closed the wholesale division of my company and created a project where I bees waxed and petrified the entire corporation. And I'm going to come back to that a little bit later. I was always working collaboratively. An important point about my work, an important point that I make politically about moving through the world today, is that there's no way, I believe, and you're going to hate to hear this, that you as studio artists, or you who are studio artists are going to be able to function in the future if you continue to have these romantic notions about your practice, that someone's going to come in and discover you and pull you out, and you're all brilliant and say, he's the one that's going to go and have a show and sell art. It's not going to happen. You know, the thing is that you have to engage with the world. 

And I think, in my opinion, my deep political position, is that exchange and collaboration is the only way that we as artists can do that. And so you're just looking at a series of early collaborations that will follow, that I continue to use collaboration as my primary mode of methodology in a work. When I start to talk about particular projects, you'll see that demonstrated, in that I can't find a place that, you know, or presume that I'm the one who's going to have the final say in any given thought or thing. There are too many things out there. And I just feel like I'm a great mediation to activate a site sensitively, socially, intelligently, theoretically, anthropologically, historically. You know, we got to move through this world where it's not just about one thing sized up in a gallery, plopped down, and you're telling somebody what your idea is, and they're supposed to get it. "Ah ha, I get it." I believe that what you're going to do in the world is take on the whole multiplicity of things and activate them in every which way you can. A sort of... 
(speaking German)

 which is a German term that's not really easily translatable in English, but it's sort of whole art, artful as a whole world. And it's a way to think through your life. A lot of my work is extremely autobiographical, like this grafter shack, which is about my family history. I come from, now four generations, five generations of beekeepers who are queen breeders. And this particular project was in discourse with Mark Dion, my partner who does a lot of work about nature, culture, conversation and the representation of nature in a contemporary world. But this was not only that, it was sort of showing that, you know, we're at the nexus as artists of many things. And it's so important to take them all on. This is what we do best. Grafter shack was at Wave Hill in New York. Did it do it again? 

(laughs)
 I think, another important method of the way I work is just immediately am concerned with not what I can do, that I'm not going to call out and dream up a project, and tell you what the outcome is. And this is a real problem for me as an artist in contemporary world. Make note, if you're vague they just interpret you as vague. But my problem is not vagueness. It's a real particular intention to keep those multiplicitous doors open for activating any given thing at one time. A site. If I go into a site, and I'm usually inspired by a site. And I look to the quotidian in search for some kind of common language that I can speak to a large body of people, you know, a large group of disciplines. But if I go into a site, I immediately want to set up a set of non-parameters so that something can emerge. 

Something called an emerging community. And this is the thing that's different about my practice and other practices that sort of get slotted in social practices, or community-based practices, or other, or merely project-based practices. I'm not moving through a site with expectations of a thing. I have hopes and dreams. And I fantasize what could possibly happen. Sometimes, I'm really disappointed. Often, I'm really disappointed. But by golly, I'll do the best I can to try and activate that site in every way I can through its history, through its economy, through its psychologies from the individuals that get involved. But the main thing is that it's not community based in that sense, where they're thinking-- And this is what the institutions want to hear-- What's it's going to look like, or what it's going to smell like or what's going to happen? But those are the doors that I want to keep open, because it's entirely emergent. 

And that's the only way it can really truly, honestly become part of a social weave, a community, is that suddenly it's not that you enforce yourself onto the community. You enforce your politics onto them and say, this is the way they should think, but actually something, the people who choose to collaborate and exchange with my projects suddenly become a part of them. We all evolve together. And the hope is that we're all transformed. So it's this transversal reality that suddenly happens that's not just about me, it's about a situation that I might have just proposed, and something else is happening. And you're looking at Cottage Industry right now, where a famous example has been published many times in South Carolina where I collaborated with that family of those three women. And I still am in a dialog with them to this day. Another important thing, none of my projects ever end. They are just part of my life. So I don't think up an idea, and think that it's going to ever leave. 

I move into it. It becomes like a virus in me. And then it takes over. It surfaces. I can actually then get invited by somebody, and then go I got a project for that place. I'll just do that. But then it never leaves me. I still have a relation with that place. I still have a psychology with that place. I still have friendships, long lasting friendships, with those places. 

And that's so important to me. If I can't leave a place without those kinds of engagements, you know, I just feel like I haven't gotten there. I've failed. Failure's not bad, though, don't get me wrong. I failed. But I've spent 20 years in that fashion industry failing every day in my open studio where hundreds of people would come in daily and watch me make the biggest faux pas, because I knew nothing about fashion, completely self-taught. You know, I just had a knack for architecture. I was really secretly an architect from, you know, since I was a child. But anyway, to move back to architecture and dwelling, almost all of my work goes to dwelling. Very important point, and I call out, you know, these great thinkers, Thoreau, Burrows, you know, great, great thinkers who actually, you know, a dwelling, a single room dwelling was an important and revolutionary part of their practice and their writings. 

And those kinds of examples are why my obsession with the little shack dwelling shed is a big thread through my work. So clothing, dwelling, thinking about those things. And particularly into the future. Cottage Industry was such a love of mine, because it was I was given an abandoned building. Mary Jane Jacob was really a collaborator in this, because she brought the building to me, you know. And Mary Jane Jacob is a curator in Chicago. I'm sure a lot of y'all know about her. And that building was just rich with history. History. I'm going to, before I talk about the next project, I want to just say something about history. 

Because when I come into a site, there's one thing that I sense right away, is that the histories are pressing in on us all around us. It's like the history of the site is primary. I mean, that's a regular tool. Right? You go to history. But what we forget is history is contemporary. It's our contemporary notion of history. And history's kind of convoluted this way, too, because it's not only about what our contemporary notion is, but it's so riddled as artists with this sort of avant-garde, highly aestheticized notion of what is contemporary. You know? George Jetsons? 

Andrea Zitell? You know, actually those are retro, in a sense. I love Andrea Zitell, she's a friend of mine. You know, not a critique. But anyway, you know, I often get mistook for sort of working in this 19th century realm, as does Mark Dion. He battles with this as well, a friend and collaborator. But it's about, sort of not getting caught up in the nostalgia of what history brings to us in a contemporary moment. I believe that in this room, in this very room, and maybe let's just look at your clothing. The Victorian is with us right now. You know, the modern is with us right now. 

I mean, it's all pressing in on us in this claustrophobic way. And it's we who activate it and engage it, so I just want to make that important point. What you're looking at right now is a really important work. I'm reluctant to walk over here because it's so bright, but I'm a mover. "R.N., The Past, Present and Future of the Nurse's Uniform." We were invited by the Fabric Workshop. What is it called? The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia to do a major work. We took over the entire museum and did a three- to four-year-long study of what the uniform was. We used the nurse's uniform as our focus. 

Now the uniform, as we all know, is so specific to set up those parameters between body and body, system and system, class and class, you know. And it's been so paramount, particularly in nursing and the medical industry. And I'm going to skip over a lot of material here, because this is a huge, vast project with so many fingers and lines of flight going in all different directions. But what we found out is that there was no uniform. There is no uniform. The uniform got broken down to scrubs. And it's been a real trauma, not only to the medical industry, you know, the practicing nurses, student nurses, but to the patients, even. Patients. We did this huge questionnaire on the Internet, and visiting all of the hospitals in Philadelphia area. And we found that everybody was so traumatized that there was no uniform. 

Which is just an interesting thing about us as a species. But I don't have time to even philosophize about that right now. But what we did was we sort of broke down the uniform into all of these categories, the nurse's uniform, even looked at popular culture. We created a think tank with retired nurses, practicing nurses, student nurses and really, even graduate art students at a couple of different schools and came to identify what that problem was and then try to tackle it. We found that the only way to really tackle it was to go create these tropes into the future, which was another part of the project that emerged right in the middle. We'd always sort of fantasize that we'd do these fashion illustrations about, you know, with the conceit about a museum show that was looking past the nurse's uniform. But actually we decided what we had to do to make that conceit complete was think about the tropes of the medical industry into the future. So this project became kind of a Sci-fi project. We had to invent what the future would look like and think like, and how it would philosophically exist. So we invented four, actually we invented a lot of Sci-fi nurses. 

But four of them we could actually produce in this project. A bioterrorism nurse, the diagnostic nurse, the post-apocalyptic nurse and the intergalactic nurse. But also at the same time we were working with students' ideas of what an ideal nurse's uniform could be. So not only were we looking now at the future and the past, but we we're trying to take those knowledges and produce a present. This is what we ended up with using the cutting-edge of medical fiber technologies. This is all silver-coated fibers. I'd love to speak deeper into this, but there's just not enough time. But one thing, too, that we did that was the universal thing that came out of this project, was we created an emblem that could become a patch that was adopted instantly by the national nursing community. And this project was praised and won awards for creating this universal patch that says "RN," which you've seen several times. And they now, when you go to a hospital, you most likely will see that patch on every registered nurse. 

And then you'll see other renditions of it where they've expanded it out registered nurse, x-ray, blah, blah, blah. You know all the other little educational acronyms. But you're now looking at the diagnostic nurse uniform. We actually invented and produced them at the Fabric Workshop. These are fiber technologies, all computer nodes and technologies embedded into a weave. And they are hypothetically able to connect to a data system where the diagnostic nurse will hug a patient and have those fibers read diagnostically to a data system, and then send back to the nurse the data of how she needs to treat this patient. So it's just more empathic and proprioceptive kind of mode of healing and prognosis. This is the post-apocalyptic nurse. And this of course, she's out in the field. This uniform was made from all sorts of architectural fibers that now buildings are being built out of. 

Imagine that these have exploded and she is just piecing these together with Ziploc seams, so nothing's stitched. It's all Ziplocked together and glued. Intergalactic nurse, which is based on a trope of knowledge into the future that we've looked back. We've gone through all of these evolutions, and now we're looking back onto self-healing and how it is, you know, to try to holistic healing. Try to heal one's self. And so this uniform is based on the acupuncture charts of the chief flow lines in acupuncture. And so we did a whole little miniature study. And there's a great thing about my projects and the way I work is that, you know, I follow my curiosity. Curiosity is the thing is drives me. I don't even think of a project, you know, until I have the curious moment like, what, how does that work? 

You know, what is that going to be like? Or, I don't know about that, so how can I learn about that? And if I'm in the middle of a project, I will definitely go to where I don't know, because that's where my most creative moment is going to be. You know, I can boldly move into a territory naively and ready and willing to take it on. Now I often tell my student friends-- I love this project. This is one of my favorite projects. I also tell my students that, you know, there's three things that you need to know to be an artist. You don't have to be able to sculpt or paint. You don't have to be able to carve or, you know, do digital anything. You don't have to be anywhere or there. 

But you have to be willing, willing and willing. That's my motto. This is what you're looking at. That word, which means "Smuggling Across Borders, Inc." This is a little corporation that I formed for a project in the show called the "Interventionists at MASS MoCA in Massachusetts." And I created a little-- I took over one of their back galleries, and I created a little squat of a factory. I actually wanted to-- I was much more ambitious than they could handle. I won't go there, but I created this little shed that I got from-- And this is how detailed I go. It's like the shed came from the backyard of the daughter of an employee that died who, because of the die works that he was doing in that factory when MASS MoCA, the museum, was a mill. It has a deep, deep, deep history. 

And mill history is one of my favorite studies. Because, you know, I'm just so starting from the textile. But this project was in me for many, many years wanting to do a project about mill history. And MASS MoCA was a site where I could sensitively move through all of its personal history and build this project that has also a nickname, called the "Multiple Suit." So I opened up this little corporation in the back gallery. I moved in, as I do, with me and my projects with all of my material, culture and collections and artifacts, and set up business. There are sort of, this project kind of folds within itself. It's a project within a project within a project. The project within the project as an installation was just me as an artist trying to co-evolve with an institution. Trying to come up with a creative way to finance this corporation, 'cause here I am, an artist, setting up a little business. 

I have no money. You know, except for a little pittance that they had for me as an artist. And I had to creatively come up with an economy between us, where we could actually function together. Artist and institution. And it was sort of my positioning to sort of do away with institutional critique, do away with critique all together, if you ask me, and move into a more constructive field. It was a real problem. And it was also harkening back to a moment in my career where I got caught up in my fashion business, and a partner that I hired fired me from my business. So this work was really kind of like, how could that happen? You know, this was a friend of mine. How could business allow that to happen? 

This life work I lost in a day. And so, inside this project was that little autobiographical curiosity of, like, what is inside of a corporation that causes that kind of dog-eat-dog, you know, back biting horrible sort of ethical component, where you can get away with murder. You can actually murder someone. And so, I used that conceit and went in and started studying the history of machismo, and went through clothing. It was my only avenue. It was the only place where I could launch from. So really, sort of going into, then, what was management. And what was corporate management? What was the three-piece suit? And I went through popular culture. 

You're looking at several things. I used the footprint, the architectural footprint of MASS MoCA. I used this wonderful 1956 Rod Sterling movie, called "Patterns." And if you've not seen it, it's really this brilliant sort of study of human behavior around corporate behavior. And I sort of went through all of these mechanisms to try and dredge up this history, and then find a way to interconnect these disparate modes of thought. This is going a head of me a little bit here. But what happened was, algorithmically, which somebody can ask me about that later, about these pieces, I was able to bring all of this information together and create a new suit to reinvent a multipled suit. That which was more complex, and took on more drama. And it actually became like a 36-piece suit that actually comes together and comes apart as a suit, a jacket, a pant, a dress, a skirt. Crudely, we're using buttons here, but constantly searching for new technologies of a way for this system to work. 

So this system is still in the works. We're still a corporation. My collaborating partner that came in the middle of the project is Iain Kerr. And he and I have further gone into investigating how we can architecturally move this piece through some kind of new mode of being clothing. It's just the most challenging thing I've ever done, and still is the most exciting thing that I'm doing. And it's also sort of moving into other current projects that I'm working on with Spurse and Spurse design, which I'll demonstrate a little bit later. Ooh! It did that thing. Those are the technical glitches that we had earlier, that I was trying to straighten out. So you're seeing these examples of the way that those 36 pieces come together and become other things. 

A skirt, pant, a coverall. So these are all the pieces sort of being fitted together. Now within another project folded inside of the project, sort of this invagination into machismo, ironically, is this other project where a person can actually come into that installation in the back galleries of MASS MoCA and make an appointment for touching and fitting. And this was the most fun, because wherever we... Could you turn that down just a pinch? Wherever we were, Iain and I would converge at the site with the customer, potential customer, and we would enter this collaboration with the customer. So another sort of yet mode of emergence occurs where, then, we with them, try to figure out a way the suit can exchange with their lifestyle, their existence. So those are the pieces. That, I wish I could talk more about. But we would give a whole performance about the history, we'd open a bottle of, you know, decant some whiskey, you know, have a little exchange of whiskey, have this whole little speech and performance, and then we'd do this series of touchings and measurings. 

It was very much like frisking, that they do at an airport, or a police frisking. It was very kind of sensual and intellectual engagement in a private little touching and fitting. This is another sort of chapter of this project that moved into France, where we actually hired a retired couturier to be our stitcher. And to develop and push the pieces into another future of what this multipled suit could be. So here, we're in France in the countryside of France doing our business, setting up nomadically anywhere, even in the middle of a wine vineyard. This was our agent of mediation, sort of the French representative who was negotiating with the couturier and with the sites we were sort of habitating at that time. There she is. So this is just a few slides about the future of that project. I'd love to talk deeper into it, but I'm not going to have time to do that. Again, this project has got many unfolding chapters. 

We've now moved it into an area we call just right now comportment. And what that is. And politically, it's just a way to take on-- These are new fibers, technology fibers that we're moving into the project. Comportment as a political position of how we can invent new modes of being in the world and new modes of communicating with each other, culture to culture. So we're using the suit as a way to get to that. I'm moving backwards now into that body of work, that beeswax work called "Wholesale To The Trade Only." I did an exhibition last year at Alexander Gray, where I revisited those histories of that archive. I had gone through this elaborate drenching of beeswax in Switzerland and a huge show in Switzerland at Fribourg Contemporary Museum. And now, I've sort of come back to revisit those histories with a different set of tools. And it was a much different environment in addressing, so I'm just showing you a few pictures of that. 

And I can talk to that if there are any questions. I don't have much time. I see I'm going to move into another project next through Spurse. You're going to see a few slides of Spurse. Spurse is an international collective. It has many, many, many people. I'd say about 100 people at this point. But they're really just sort of looking in. It's Internet based collective. But they're about seven to 12 of us who actually are working solidly together. 

And within that collective, there's another collective called Spurse Design. And many of these projects sort of fold over into Spurse Design projects. And they're really a big part of my practice, although I'm not going to be able to talk a lot about Spurse tonight, unless somebody asks me a question. But these are a handful of projects that we've worked on in the last three years, I'd say two or three years. And we're currently working on a major project with Grand Arts. I've tried to tie in some parts of the university here into the project, because we collaborate with people all over the world. And we're currently working on the notion of deep time and rapid time. It's an environmental project about the old great inland sea and the desert. And Kansas City and Grand Art will be the site of the exhibition in 2009, I think fall of 2009. So we're going to that heavy right now. 

I do a lot of food projects. One project that's not up here is called the Public Table, that we can talk about that too, later. But what you're about to see, and what you're listening to right now, this music is called "The Lost Meeting." And this was a project I was invited to by a curator, Julie Courtney, I just mentioned a few names. I'm so sorry I haven't mentioned all the names. In my longer lecture, I'll go in and I'll mention every name of the people who are working on these projects, because there's so many. There's just not me. I can't do all of this alone. It takes many people to do something. And you've got to always forget that-- I mean, remember that. 

Never forget, you know, as Bruno Latour writes, is that we often ignore, or forget, or push away, how many people go into making us who we are. It's a silly thing. Of course, you think my parents made me who I am, but it's not true. It's like, your friends, the person you're sitting next to and having a dialog with, they're having as much to do about who you are as your parents, and probably even more. The history of this country is steeped, you know, in Quaker history. You know, these were, you know, dispersed people who came here from Europe. It's part of, you know, all of that religious migration that still has formed us as a puritanical nation today. You know, but Quakerism was unique because they still, you know, a fundamental theory in their culture is being active. Activism. It's not just a simple term where activism is, you know, politically being active. 

It's actually a term that you're activating the world. And this is something very important about my practice. I learn through Quaker culture that it's so important that I probably could be a Quaker. It's about activating every part of your life that you can possibly activate. It's not just relegated to the studio. It's not relegated to just your dialog with your, you know, studio partner or your roommate. It's actually, if you're really truly an artist, how can you creatively and inventively activate every part of your life? I speak to this in my new project called "Mildred's Lane," where we have a contemporary art complex that we're reinventing and reassembling the terms of the Contemporary Art Museum on our compound in Pennsylvania, called Mildred's Lane. And we speak to a mode of living we call work styles. And I'm going to speak about that tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. 

in the sculpture department. And anybody who's interested in coming to Mildred's Lane, we do three or four intensive sessions every summer. They're three weeks long. They're very particularly about our network of artists, dinners, friends, speakers, lecturers, modes of thinking, researching, dwelling, living. It's life as an artist. Kind of a finishing school for artists, if you ask me. Lost Meeting, to get back to that, was an investigation of the pattern. We sort of broke the Quaker culture down into what their concerns are. And it's a big argument about mediation. To God, to earth, to culture. 

Mediation became a primary point convergence for us. We sort of broke down the tools of that place, that culture, that situation, sociologically, anthropologically, scientifically, architecturally artistically and created this little studio that completely emerged out of the rubble of its very being in history. That again, is an algorithmic problem that I can talk to in questioning. But we created what was called the "Lost Meeting." Why the Lost Meeting? The building itself and its history was nicknamed the Lost Meeting, because it was built out of a schism in the early part of the 19th century, 1827 to be exact. And that schism was all about the Orthodox Quakers and the Liberal Quakers, what were called the Hixsite Quakers, arguing about what was it about mediation. You know, that the Hixsites, which were the liberals, were thinking there's no mediation. We have a direct experience. And these are philosophical issues, mind you. 

The orthodox still wanted there to be a mediating experience. And so the building, this building was built out of an argument where 19 Orthodox Quakers stood up out of the meeting, the Abbington Meeting in Philadelphia, and walked out and went over and built their own building. They were so mad. And so, that history of that building is how this whole project emerges, and what it philosophically speaks to and what we produce there. So we get to somehow, skipping over a lot of material and a lot of history, to the pattern. And so we create this elaborate drafting studio. Architectural drafting, pattern drafting, industrial design drafting. What it is to get to an object, a thing. And how does that thing move further than it is. So again, we're emerging these ideas within the project, and we're going to material culture around Philadelphia, Quaker material culture. 

These things that you're looking at now are such things in Quaker material culture that we've pushed down the pattern methodology into these three-dimensional digital forms. So, a Quaker bonnet becomes that in our project. In a way, I just want to say-- There's a good example of what's going on. But all of my projects, I want to say in sort of closing up, because we're running out of time, sort of bend back over or fold back in or pleat into another project or another form of life. And I just want to point out this intergalactic pattern that was created for "RN" became an architectural path and study for a commission, architectural commission for Spurse Design. We used that very pattern to create this piece of architecture. So I just want to sort of, in a final note, show you how my practice never ends. It's a part of my life. It completely encircles and gets regurgitated, reassembled and moves back into the real world in some way. And that's very, very, very important to me as an artist. 

Mildred's lane. End of my lecture. I welcome questions. 
(applause)
 If y'all, I know some of y'all have to leave. I know I'm competing with Barack, sadly. But if y'all, anybody who wants to stay and have questions, please move forward so we can just, you know, have a chat. Yes? 
- I have a question about... 
(inaudible)

 
- Can y'all hear what she asked? 
- Not a word! 
- Is there a mic that we can pass around, 'cause that was frustrating last week, I know, that no one can hear the questions. And I'm going to be so bad about repeating the question. Good question. It was awkward for me. Especially, as a young artist coming out of romantic notions of art school, and what I call the Van Gogh theory, is that we're all supposed to be crazy, and weird, and eccentric. Yeah, yeah, yeah, please. 
- I was asking about, you know, in the early ages in the fashion... 

(inaudible)
 And I'm wondering if that felt strange, since it seemed contrary to kind of anti-establishment, anti-economic establishment undercurrent. 
- This is what I thought, was so good, I mean, just to go, I'm starting from the end of your question, because there's several questions within a question. What's been so fun for me in fashion is that I was kind of an intervention. I was always an intervention in that world. And they never got that until the end. They certainly thought oh, that art girl, damn her. 
(laughs)
 But, you know, I want to talk to certain pieces of that, and if I get off track, bring me back to it. Because, you know, I always say to students trying to be artists, it's like, and I said the Van Gogh theory. 

There's this romantic notion that we exist, you know, in this other world. In this higher culture of art. And more and more, that's just getting out of hand. I think now, there's suddenly a huge movement and backlash in the 21st century. In the late 20th century, it really got out of hand. And I'm trying to bite my lip right now, because I know I'll go off on a tangent. I just think there's this nostalgia about what being an artist is that ignores the fact that we have to make a living. And I've heard you, and I've talked to many of you throughout the week that I've been here, is that you think that when I get out of school I'm going to go do this, or I'm going to do this. But it's never. I have not heard one of you say when I get out of school I'm going to be an artist. 

And it's disturbing to me, because I learned in those early days of being a fashion designer where I said oh, yeah, I'm going to go start a company, by God, and make my own rules, is where I was coming from, and create my own world. But I haven't heard any of you say anything remotely close to that. And this was back in the early '80s that I did that. And it's really disturbed me, because that is the new revolutionary ground. You know, there are great thinkers who speak to this. Stingers, Masumi, who talk about capitalism and industry as a way for us to, you know, enter into the greater global discourse. And it's the only way that we, as creative and inventive political artists, can enter is to move through a world that everybody else is moving in and intervene in a productive way, not in a critical way. Not in a critical way by means of, you know, post-modernism and, you know, darida. Not in a critical way where, you know, you're sitting in your studio and you're telling each other what you think of their work, but in a productively critically engaged way where you're thinking as you go. You're learning as you go. 

And I think in my early, you know, attempts at this whole project, you know, I was a really young artist fresh out of graduate school. I was thinking, what, how do I do this? I was still learning as I went, and figuring out the whole system as I go. I realized that it's nothing different than what the art world does. I have a gallery in New York. I see what he does, and I speak to what he does. That whole system has this sort of double standard, because they don't talk about the economics, you know, of the culture of art. And, you know, I may have gone off on some tangents, but I'm trying to sort of stab at the things that you threw out to me. 
- Has there also been, this is sort of a follow-up question. Has there been an aesthetic? 

There's this big debate as to how much aesthetics has to do with politics. I guess a follow-up question I have is that there's this big debate among our circles. 
(inaudible)
 Can it be, you know, productive in a certain political sense? And I guess I'm wondering, too, then have you adopted... 
(inaudible)
 Did it exist even earlier? 
- I think absolutely. And you know what that is? It's not just aesthetic. 

It's complexity. Complexity on a more abstract level. Aesthetics is to, you know, it's a loaded word. It's truly complexity. You can't just call out one thing. It's got to be, that's sort of how I came to work. I think I learned how to work like this in the fashion system. And I realized very early on that complexity was my friend. And we as a culture and Dalou speaks to this in his control society article that I keep trying to dredge up to pass around to people, because it's a really important and turning article for me. Jill Dalou's postscript on control societies where, you know, it's like we've been so trained to not accept complexity. 

We're "no" people. We say no, no, no. We need to like hone it in, hone it in, hone it in. Curators. Hone it in, girl. 
(laughs)
 
(inaudible)
 
- No, I think it's-- I do it to myself. 

I am like my own worst enemy, you know. Walt Kelly's Pogo. May I quote the great socialist comic strip from the '50s that my dad was a great enthusiast of. "We has met the enemy, and he is us," you know? Yes? 
- So could you explain... 
(inaudible)
 
- I'm not a gallery artist, and my gallery knows it. As a matter of fact, I was invited to work with this gallery because he knew that. 

He was somebody who had watched my career since the day I came into New York City in 1988. He knew everything I had ever done, and everything that I, you know, every store that I did, every project that I had done internationally. And I said to him, you know, I'm not a gallery artist. I don't make things like that. I make events, situations and something emerges. And he just said, I know, I don't care. You've got to think of me as your agent. And he was a radical beckoning to me. Also, it was a moment where I was becoming, you know, kind of financially unstable. I'm a single parent with a kid, you know, with a lot of friends. 

And my partner is my best friend and my business partner in our venture Mildred's Lane. But I figured well, I need to step into that arena, and let me figure that out as I go. But I'm certainly not thinking of it as a place where I can, like, make a painting and sell. I'm thinking of it as a situation that now I have an agent and a place where I can actually move into and in and out of, and we're in a dialog to try a find a way for that to work. You know, my projects come in many forms. Like I say, a business, corporation and sole proprietorship, a thing, I'll still sell a piece of clothing off my back just to make a buck. I got to make a living, I got to support myself. It's still a very complex system. There's no black and white here. I'm not suddenly plopped in a gallery, and now I'm just going to sit in my studio and make things. 

I'm just trying to activate as much as I possibly can in my life. It's the only way I can survive as an artist. And I would say, I would challenge you all to do that, and not get stuck in one thing, but you apply your creative and intelligent and inventive self, and invent a place for yourself. Don't go by, you know, the rules that you've been handed to you, and the degree that you've been handed to you and say, "Oh, I got credentials now." It makes no difference. It makes no difference. It's just about how you're going to activate a situation at any moment, at any given time, anywhere on the planet. That's what being an artist is to me. A good artist. Yes? 

(inaudible)
 
- To change the subject a little bit, I'm really curious about the fact that... 
(inaudible)
 You touched on how history, you're not a nostalgic sense of history... 
(inaudible)
 
- Yeah, you know, I have to say or I have to confess, I hate that word, "confess," you know. My daddy was an atheist. I have to say that my huge work comes out of a lot of autobiographical experiences. 

At least, I don't talk to my history. But the best thing I can do, and the best, most comfortable way I can come to a project is starting from me, somewhere. But the best thing I can do as an artist is to move it out from me. As fast as I possibly can. But to be integral for me to be a part of the project and a part of the world, I have to start with what I got. And whatever tools that I have in my conceptual tool box of things, of experiences. And I use that conceptual tool box of experiences to have more shared experiences. So, and I have to be maybe a little hypocritical at this point, because it is a little nostalgic where it starts. But then it quickly jumps into my experiences as a fashion designer, which is also autobiographical. I have to take on those situations and experiences that had happened to me during that period of my life. 

Then I quickly use those to move out into different vectors. I try to move quickly across a greater terrain, not so it's focused on me, but it's focused on my shared experiences. I'm not the only one who's had these experiences in this world. I actually am part of the human species, and I know the sadness is-- everybody has it, you know. So it's just in my particular situation, or event, or experience is going to be particular to me. I can immediately, empathically and proprioceptively engage a situation and gather up, you know, with my tool box, all these other tools of all these other people. 
- I mean, I understand where it goes, I get that. But I guess what I'm trying to get is, I may be wrongly perceiving as it's sort of a love of this kind of historical aesthetic. It seems like it's stemming from, and maybe you're saying universally, it's this personal affection for that kind of... 
- But like I said before, I still believe that historical aesthetic is contemporary. 

I drive that. 
- I'm agreeing with you, but... 
- It's just my particular, you know, avenue of getting to it. And that is completely based on my history as a person. 
- Right. 
- In the deep south. Turbulent Civil Rights time. My father, the way I was raised. Very unusual kind of poetic childhood. Now, I say I spend my entire life trying to live up to the quality of childhood that I had, because it was just so rich. 

You know, there was nothing-- Everything was alive and drama. It was that political moment in history in the early '60s, all of the '60s, that so affected my life and my family. Sorry, if I'm not getting exactly. 
- I think what I'm getting at is that it's a difficult thing to kind of articulate, in some ways. 
(inaudible)
 I guess my problem is I have a sort of similar problem, I'm certainly attracted to sort of historical... 
- Things, things. 
- If it's possible, make it contemporary. It just happens naturally. I have a similar attraction to that. 

(inaudible)
 That's come up as a criticism, and I personally don't get it. It's almost only in the art world does that come up as criticism. 
- Yeah, in our world it is. 
(inaudible)
 In advertising and fashion, it's perfectly legitimate to look back to move forward. Somehow in the art world it's not allowed or if any of it has been done. 
- Right, right. The art world is very rigid. 
- Yeah. 

- It's extremely rigid, and don't think that it's not. It's even more rigid than, you know, than maybe being an automobile mechanic. I mean, what I want to say to that is like, I brought up Andrea Zitell. Often, I get juxtaposed, Andrea Zitell and me, because we sort of, you know, have these parallel venues. You know, I have Mildred's Lane. She has Deep Desert Sites. She's working in clothing, modes of dwelling, design. I'm also doing that, but I'm assembling and reassembling. So we get compared when people write about these things. And it's always confounding, because what happens in the tally of the writing is that Andrea, and she's my friend, you know, and I love her work, I'm a big fan of hers. 

We're actually going to be collaborating on a project coming up. But she gets sort of identified as the future, you know, her having that modern aesthetic. And I get sort of summed up as the history, an end of segmentation and stratification of these issues in the art world. But Andrea really speaks to retro design. She is calling upon modernism, retro design and speaking specifically, you know, to history. And we haven't actually gotten into deep, you know, dialog about this, but we will I'm sure at some point. But I call upon history with conscious effort to reinvent a future. It's like to create a perspective on a future you have to critically look at the past, and you have to reconstruct. We, as present beings in the world, have to reconstruct these histories in order to create and invent the future. And I am interested in what the future looks like, as my practice. 

- It's curious how what was once considered sort of modern has now become retro... 
(inaudible)
 
- It's changing all the time. 
(inaudible)
 
- Imagine a post-apocalyptic future... 
- But we can play with these things, you know. It's just stuff we can play with. 
(inaudible)

 
- Yeah, yeah. Question? 
- It seems like when you started you were really interested in the vernacular... 
- I still am. 
- And not interested in... 
(inaudible)
 Rather than focusing on aesthetic requirements... 
(inaudible)
 And how we lose the vernacular, and you lose all that history of everyday... 

- I still am interested in that. But I still am interested in vernacular as a term to activate as a common language. Vernacular, not as a term that immediately is our nostalgic thinking of it, you know, vernacular architecture, little dwellings, you know. I mean, that's where I come out of, I love that. But vernacular as a meaning of a common dialect, a common language, a common place to converge. And I think I sort of have theoretically sort of tried to move the vernacular through another field and into another field. But I'm still concerned with the same things, I think. I think that I just don't have time to talk to it right now, you know, because it's such a lot of material. You know, I've tried this lecture many times. I sometimes go to a class like this is, and I just talk about one project and I touch on these things. 

I showed you 350 images, so there's no way. I apologize for that. But I just, you know, I'm experimenting in this. And I was trying to do a new lecture, but my technology got bogged down today. If I speak about one project, I would go deeper into that, and I think, you know, talk to that a little bit more. But I think I still am there with that. Question? Yeah? You're going to give me hell aren't you? 
- I'm sorry! 

I'm just going to speak loudly. You mentioned about the turbulent '60s and I wonder. I know nostalgia is not an obtainable word. 
(inaudible)
 But I wonder if you sometimes feel like you're nostalgic for that turbulent, chaotic... 
- It obviously stained me. 
(laughs)
 But no, I'm not nostalgic for it. I mean, it stained me. And it's like, I think I just was formed to think a particular way. 

That's my little boy Gray Rabbit right there. I think that I was, I don't know, you know. I would call in a psychoanalyst. 
(inaudible)
 
- I think we're all nostalgic. 
- Well, I think we all are, you know, and I say use it. Not in that sort of self, you know, collapsed sense, where you're the artist in the studio, and you're painting the Van Gogh theory, you know, cutting off your ear. Not like that, but use it productively. It also goes back to my positioning about, you know, the placement of critique in the 21st century. 

It's like no, no critique. Just disband that. Let's do something collective, and let's critically think through a problem situation, site, dialog. Not canceling out one thing or the other. The history of philosophy makes me so mad. You know, it's just like one guy canceling out the last guy. And it's only been in the last decade where thinkers stopped doing that. Where they finally woke up and said no, we can't do this. We can only add on, make complex, you know, move through. There's no one thing canceling out another. 

We have all these cultures, and identities, and theories, and philosophies, and a whole history of things. What the hell can you do? It's overwhelming. I might as well faint right now if I start thinking about it. But it's, you know, it's like use what you have and what you know, and try to move into the world and invent new modes of being in the world, before, to, with the world. And that's what I try to do, as best as I can. Maybe I don't do it so well all the time, but by God, I'm going to continue trying. 
(applause)
 Thank you.